Three is a Magical Number
by beverytender
Summary: He's starting to think she may even be able to take over the world if she weren't so lazy. Sam/Freddie/Carly. This... I don't even know. I sat down to write the next part of Therapy, and the title popped in my head and it exploded into a 3parter. Enjoy.
1. Chapter 1

It's all Sam's idea, of course. Her fault, depending on your point of view. Which isn't to say that he's never thought about it, only that he'll never say he thought about it.

There's a certain amount of applauding - not literally, he's pretty sure that'd be awkward and Go Over Badly - that she deserves, though. She's pretty subtle about this, plans it out over a period of time, clearly.

The funny thing about Sam is as much as everyone knows she's a criminal mastermind, no one thinks she's a criminal mastermind.

It starts at the end of an iCarly rehearsal, just one little side comment from Sam,

"You know, three's a magical number."

He and Carly just glance at each other and shrug, she's been weird since just before the Nora incident and he'd bet cash money that neither one of them thought about it again for about two weeks.

Now he gets it. Groundwork.

The next piece doesn't even come from her, at least, not directly. But everyone knows Ripoff Rodney and Wendy, the gossip queen, are 'close' and Sam hung out with him only a couple days before Wendy came up to him and Carly in the hallway. It's not hard to follow that trail.

He tries for "horrified" when Wendy says "Rumor is all three of you iCarlies are screwing each other," but he's well aware he doesn't accomplish it nearly as well as Carly does.

He's not even sure if he says anything before he heads off in the opposite direction from his next class, and it's screwed up the way the first thing he focuses on is when did 'iCarlies' become the accepted name for him, Sam and Carly.

When he gets to school the next day every guy he passes on the way to their lockers - he doesn't even think about how this makes him, them, look guilty - pats him on the back and congratulates him.

Carly's clearly freaking, he catches the end of her high pitched question, "-don't you care?," but Sam's just leaning against her locker.

She shrugs, "Way I see it, you and I just got hotter, Shay. I agree it sucks we're linked to that," she nodded in Freddie's direction, "though, we totally wouldn't need him."

And then she's off, who knows to where, and Carly's just staring, shocked. Obviously she's never thought about it.

Now, he can pinpoint that moment as when Sam's plan got too big for her and everything began to spin completely out of control. Now, it doesn't do any good.

He thinks she kinda got that it was newer to Carly, though, 'cuz she backs off a bit. It's not really a surprise, they're not joking when they joke about Carly being a priss, and there are more separations between the three of them than anyone else would guess, and they never talk about them, but this is the biggest one. Carly hates change, and the switch from kid to teenager and middle school to high school was one she preferred to ignore. He and Sam, though, they were just waiting for the exit sign to light up, as much as they didn't want to be away from Carly, they wanted to be away from their mothers.

None of those thoughts, not even knowing how visceral and physical a person Sam is, or how impatient, made him prepared to walk into the iCarly studio and see Sam pinning Carly up against the wall with her hands and her hair and yes, everything that goes along with that picture.

He's a little amazed he didn't pass out.

When Sam does pull back to breath and give her weak explanation (Everyone's saying we are, so why shouldn't we?), he can't tell if Carly's shocked or- or into it, she's not saying anything, not saying no, but she won't meet his eyes at first. But once again she's steps ahead of them, and in a blink Sam's pulled Carly away from the wall and pushed - no, guided, Sam's being gentle, Carly in front of him, into him, and he thinks he hears her whisper into her ear, 'you know you want to, it's okay,' but words aren't making any sense to him at all right now.

If only everything didn't start better than it finished. Next morning, it's just him and Sam waking up in the studio and Carly's long gone and the two of them aren't touching at all until he gets up to leave and Sam puts up her hand to stop him, "Trust me. Don't go after her. She's got to think through this and have her little freakout with someone who isn't us before she can talk to us again."

He's not entirely sure she's right, but she's known Carly longer than he has, or at least better than he has, and he's not going to lie, it's pretty tempting to stay when she's stretching like that. Should've known the girl would be shameless.

They'll find Carly later.


	2. Chapter 2

center

Carly's always been the type of kid who's up freakishly early, and more mornings than not she's been up before Spencer (except, of course, when Sam's there), so it's not weird when he comes out of his room and she's sitting on the couch. But it is weird that she's got a bowl of cereal going to mush in her lap (she prefers it fresh-out-of-the-box crunchy) and she's not watching the traditional Saturday morning Girly Cow marathon.

He's a bit cautious as he crosses the room - he still remembers the 'never tell a girl to calm down' fit - and takes a seat next to her, but not too close. "Morning, kiddo."

He thinks it's a pretty banal, common ground greeting, a feeler for what type of mood she's in and why and then she turns to him and asks the weirdest - wait… yeah. the weirdest question she's ever asked him, "Spencer, what do you think of relationships between three people?"

… … Woahhhno. No. Dear God in Heaven, he will do anything if you just make it so he heard her wrong. He will move to Yakima and give up art and become a man-nun if she just doesn't mean what he thinks (his brain's going to get a bleach bath later) she means.

Ahhhhhh, no. He has to be the mature adult. IF some asshole at school's trying to pressure her into… something, then it's his job to tell her to say no. Which he does, immediately, twice because his voice cracks a little halfway through the first try.

Then it occurs to him that he may have actually heard her wrong because she looks befuddled by his answer, so he asks, "Whhhat kind of," he grimaces, "relation- thing?"

And cue freakout, he ducks backwards and covers his head as she stands up, cereal flying everywhere as if to emphasis her mental state. Heh, he'll have to paint that later, it's a cool- Oh, shit, pay attention.

"I don't know! No one told me, no one said anything, they just - And she! How am I supposed to know what she's thinking? Him, it's pretty obvious, duh, but she could just be - or she could be! I don't know, and I don't like not knowing!"

… Shit, now there's a 'she' involved. He's been mature enough for one day, "You know what, I don't think I can help you with this one. I think-"

"You're right. I should-" For a split second, she looks scared. "I should go talk to her. Bye, Spencer."

"Wait! Which her? Carly!" Too late, the door's slamming behind her.

The walk to Sam's has her almost turning around every five minutes, but she grits her teeth - not literally, that's very bad for them - and only backtracks a couple times and not for long. Sam's mom just shuffles Carly through to the bedroom, clearly she hasn't had to deal with her kid freaking out about - she still doesn't have a word for this.

Standing at that door is a lot more difficult, and she freaks out for a minute about whether there was any reason for her to freak out in the first place because Sam's just rocking out to one of those angry rock playlists she likes. Slowly, she manages to raise her hand and knock tentatively.

The song finishes and silence reigns for about a minute before Sam opens the door. It's obvious immediately that she came home and went back to sleep because she's reaching to button her jeans as the door swings open. She stops, leaving it undone, when she sees it's Carly, and Carly has to bite back a badly timed nervous giggle.

"Hey, cupcake."

"That's it? Hey, cupcake? That's what you have to say to me after what you did?"

"Oookay." Sam reached out and wrapped her fingers around Carly's elbow, tugging her into her bedroom. "Let's get you out of parental hearing distance."

"Why'd you do that?"

"'Cuz that's probably the only thing my mom would freak out about?"

"Not that that, the other that. Yesterday's that."

"Oh. That that. I told you, why shouldn't we since everyone thought we were?" She sat down on the edge of her bed, glancing away.

"Sam."

"Okay, fine. And I wanted to."

"You've… You've thought about that before?"

"Well… Yeah. You really haven't?"

"No."

They lapsed into an awkward silence for a good five minutes, before Carly spoke again.

"Do you think… He had?"

Sam chuckled, "Duh."

"Did the two of you talk about it?"

"Noo, but come on. He's a teenage boy with two hot girl best friends, and he says he's not gay, so."

"You're not."

"What, not gay? Nah. I just don't see why I should limit my options to one or the other."

"I meant, you're not a teenage boy., so why'd you think about it?"

Sam shrugged, "You're hot, Carls. Everybody's noticed, and you're - you. You're kind of irresistible, everybody's a little bit in love with you. Just, it's kinda more than a little with Fredachi."Sam turned bashful, picking at a thread on her comforter, "And me. Proximity or something. And, you know, everything works really well with the three of us, so I just figured why not run with that instead of going... against it."

"Oh." Carly breathed.


	3. Chapter 3

So since fanfic net is doing this removal of stories that describe a 'physical reaction of a violent or sexual nature' (read: all my stories) I'm not going to be posting here any more. All of my stuff is also on AO3, username beverytender, and it might be on dreamwidth soon. Anyways. The best thing about ffnet is the alert system, so if anyone wants to be alerted when I post a chapter or new fic or whatever, send me a message (here or on tumblr (hard-to-translate) or AO3) and let me know which story or fandom or ship you want alerts for, and your email or tumblr or some such, and I will shoot you a message when I post something that you want to know about. 


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